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it_user229374 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Systems & Security Admin at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
I like the performance, scalability, and cost effectiveness.

What is most valuable?

  • Reliability
  • Support
  • Flash storage - I wish we were using it

How has it helped my organization?

We have not had a moment's down time.

What needs improvement?

I would like it to be greener, with a lower power draw and generating less heat. That is not a comment on a problem with this SAN, it's something I look for in any hardware additions.

For how long have I used the solution?

It entered into production in July 2012.

Buyer's Guide
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Nothing unexpected.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

It's fine, no issues.

Technical Support:

Two years ago it was 9/10. Now, perhaps it's 7/10. The quality is still excellent but, like many other vendors, the primary support is on the other side of the world, and there is a time zone issue. We will schedule a patch and I'll see an email or a phone message that came in between midnight and three AM, with a question. You lose a day replying, because the engineers don't call with questions during normal business hours in the Central Time zone. This is not an issue if you run a night staff.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also previously used NetApp and Xiotech, and switched to 3PAR as HP presented a solution that addressed performance, scalability, and, I'm told, it was cost effective.

How was the initial setup?

The HP setup spreadsheet is a beast. It's much more extensive than any previous SAN, but going through the process addresses almost every issue that's likely to come up.

What about the implementation team?

We were guided through this process by Sayers Consulting. They were outstanding, especially Bill Tohtz and Dean Flatland.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, we looked at several presentations.

What other advice do I have?

Set time aside to go through the setup spreadsheet.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user

Thanks for the review - so much has changed since you implemented your T-400. You've probably heard about the HP 3PAR StoreServ All-Flash Array. HP 3PAR All-Flash won the All-Flash Product of the Year Award from TechTarget. I have a blog that talks about it. hpstorage.me We also introduced the 7000 family that brought the fabulous 3PAR architecture down to the midrange and in fact in less than a year rocketed to the #2 mid-range array.

For anyone that wants to read more about HP 3PAR, here's a link to the hp.com product page: hpstorage.me And if you want a more technical view, here's a link to 3PAR articles on my blog: bit.ly

PeerSpot user
Director, Midwest Cloud Consulting at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
MSP
3PAR - Popeye's spinach for the I.T. Industry

What is most valuable?

The CPG, Dynamic / Adaptive Optimization, the CLI, and more importantly the way it's licensed as you are not "tagged" and held hostage when you're at 1TB, and another, and another, and another. The licensing is a brilliant approach to the fiscal tourniquet of scalability! Oh.. I also like the service processor and how it's out of band and monitors the SAN, how it does the updates - neat little component.

How has it helped my organization?

Scaling and performance. Easy to add shelves, easy to move data around while everything is hot, move data from tier to tier, expanding a LUN, there are so many ways it's just amazing how much it's helped! The snapshot and sending them to different tiers by using the CPG makes life a bit easier!

What needs improvement?

Removing a LUN mapping from a single host is a bit odd, worse a single host in a host set, it needs 10G ports for IP based replication (needs to be 1 or 10G). Keep working on the SSMC and allow for GUI management to be cross platform.

For how long have I used the solution?

Around 2 years

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I have deployed several and found the SmartStart CD to be intermittent. Also, during the install when the SP locates the array, the network based multicast can't find the storage array and you have to go to console / serial cable. Not too big of a deal, but you then have to configure settings manually.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Never as of yet. It has been rock solid!

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We can't hit it hard enough yet. As I said adding shelves and drives all is pretty nice and straight forward.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Early on, I had some strong opinions about the transition to more of HP support. I raised concerns, The HP team in Alpharetta, Ga lead by Brad Bates took significant steps, listened, and made adjustments. Buying a product is one thing, post-sale is what keeps customers coming back and maintains longevity.

Technical Support:

Thus far, pretty impressive. I met the actual teams of people and after the initial "hiccup", I had a chance to see the HP Lab, meet some of the people that enjoy what they do. It's important for everyone to understand that IT people work inverse hours and when we make changes it's evenings, weekends, and holidays. Senior level - tenured members of most companies are "off" while HP found a way to keep solid individuals available to be available.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Funny you ask - let's just say a "no named" array that had redundant controllers completely torched nearly every ESX datastore where it "gutted" the data inside of it, but left the shell. Yet, the support person on the phone called the update "successful on my end". Sure, the nodes made have updated, but the data was gone - you be the judge! I have used solutions from many, many storage vendors.

How was the initial setup?

Pretty straightforward - even though HP says "self installable" I highly recommend a qualified person with a great deal of understanding of virtualization, zoning, etc. Could a person with no experience using storage do this? Eh...maybe getting the array on-line, but I would not recommend it (nor would I for any vendor).

What about the implementation team?

Well, I am "that vendor team", but I am also a user as well. So, if I am allowed to rate my experience - 25 years of IT, nearly 15 years of storage - we can do pretty well!!

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The usual EMC stuff.

What other advice do I have?

Whether you are new to storage or advanced, this is the most amazing piece of hardware I have ever had my hands on, built, and used. The thought behind much of the detail of how it works just seems incredible. Think about this, you have drives that sit in multiple RAID arrays because of the CPGs and how the SAN is always moving chunklets around to keep hot spots from occurring. If I could meet the founders and shake their hand, I would love to and let them know thank you. Thank you for giving me the chance to have fun with my job and have access to such hardware. I would also thank HP for taking a datacenter class piece of hardware and re-aligning it to be competitive in any space - just brilliant!

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: I personally bought my own 3PAR for myself (no HP discounts were given to me - other than I bought the arrays using the HP renew program), my company owns 3PAR arrays for our hosting practice, but I am also the Director of a consulting practice that is responsible for architecting solutions for clients. We can sell any vendor, and we have, but we landed and only sell HP because 3PAR is the "SAN doctor in the house"!
PeerSpot user

Steve - also just noticed you work for EMC XtremIO - if you're leaving those kind of comments here to create FUD, shame on you. If it's the line you're being fed by your competitive attack people, you should have them create true competitive information instead of spreading untruths. I find it interesting that EMC takes the tact of trying to attack the performance of deduplication. I'm guessing they realized that doesn't work because the latest I've heard is attacking the fact that there's an ASIC. Here's a recent blog that addresses that EMC FUD: hpstorage.me

See all 5 comments
Buyer's Guide
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Information Technology Team Lead at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
Real User
User-friendly, useful interface, and highly reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "HPE 3PAR StoreServ has a good interface, it is user-friendly and easy to use."
  • "Here in Algeria, we are facing a lot of trouble finding partners and getting support from HPE. There should be better support here in our country."

What is our primary use case?

We host and store everything we have in HPE 3PAR StoreServ. We created the laws and connected them to our servers, and on those servers, we have VMware as a hypervisor. We make backups of all the data from the servers.

What is most valuable?

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has a good interface, it is user-friendly and easy to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used HPE 3PAR StoreServ within the past 12 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution has been working perfectly, we have not had any issues since we purchased it. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is highly reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

Here in Algeria, we are facing a lot of trouble finding partners and getting support from HPE. There should be better support here in our country.

What other advice do I have?

Recently we had an issue because we added some hard drives to HPE 3PAR StoreServ and we needed to upgrade the VMware to allow support by HPE 3PAR StoreServ hard drives.

We were discussing with our IT manager if we were going to stay with this solution or are we going to use another solution for a disaster recovery plan because we need a disaster recovery plan.

I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1585665 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architech at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Real User
A storage solution with a useful team provisioning feature, but cloud integration could be better
Pros and Cons
  • "I like that 3PAR can remake the disk online. That's one of the best features because when we first started, that was the best. The team provisioning feature was also a good one. Those features are the best for me, provisioning and online optimization, and the tier you can have for storage."
  • "Cloud integration could be better. They can also add an NVMe to port to that. I would like to see NVMe in the next release. That's the future or the near future for storage. That will give us a real high throughput and some performance."

What is our primary use case?

We use it mostly for databases and file share. 

What is most valuable?

I like that 3PAR can remake the disk online. That's one of the best features because when we first started, that was the best. The team provisioning feature was also a good one. Those features are the best for me, provisioning and online optimization, and the tier you can have for storage.

What needs improvement?

Cloud integration could be better. They can also add an NVMe to port to that. I would like to see NVMe in the next release. That's the future or the near future for storage. That will give us a real high throughput and some performance.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with HPE 3PAR StoreServ for about ten years or since the beginning when the product was in the market.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's quite stable. The only problem that I have found with this product is when you are missing storage space. When you lack storage space, and the disk is full is when you have most of the problems with this product. But if you don't have these issues, you'll almost never have a problem with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability could be better. I think it's getting short right now, and another product has more scalability. This product, I think, is medium if that's acceptable. I don't know how to measure it.

How are customer service and technical support?

I think it's excellent. I actually think they are very good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy. It takes between two to four hours to upload the functions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's a good price.

What other advice do I have?

If you want to run this solution, I would say that this product is mostly dying from my point of view. If you're my customer, I would recommend not to buy a 3PAR because there are a lot of new products. I would recommend Nimble, depending on the size, or a Primera if they need a really big solution. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE 3PAR StoreServ a seven.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Manager of Customer Services with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
A scalable, stable solution for database work with excellent technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is easy to use and very stable."
  • "An area of improvement for this solution is an increase in the bandwidth as well as an upgrade of the storage functionality and capabilities. The storage needs to be expandable for future-proofing."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of this solution is for clusters, database work (Oracle and MySQL), and storage.

What needs improvement?

An area of improvement for this solution is an increase in the bandwidth as well as an upgrade of the storage functionality and capabilities. The storage needs to be expandable for future-proofing.

An additional feature I would like to see in the next release is for the management interface not to depend on Java.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for three and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is easy to use and very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable, but we required an extension.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, I used EMC VNX. We switched because we couldn't monitor anything unless we uploaded a data file to EMC and they send us back an analysis.

How was the initial setup?

The installation of the solution required three people and took three days, but for the storage-side, it took eight hours to get running.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
ITManagec405 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Real User
Provides us with simplified, centralized storage but the performance has been disappointing
Pros and Cons
  • "We know exactly the capacity that we need for the upcoming year, and it's much easier for us to enlarge the capacity and expose these disk volumes to the relevant servers."
  • "...sizing is everything. If you don't do the sizing right and you don't understand every detail of the product, how it works, you can be in a very unpleasant situation when you pay half a million dollars and you have a product that does not work as you expected."

What is our primary use case?

We use 3PAR as our centralized storage for database use, mostly. It's also data stores for our VMs. We have a few Oracle Databases running on 3PAR and we have our production VMs running on 3PAR, as well.

How has it helped my organization?

Before using centralized storage, we needed to make sure that we have enough physical disks installed in a server. Now, we know exactly the capacity that we need for the upcoming year, and it's much easier for us to enlarge the capacity and expose these disk volumes to the relevant servers. Again, in our case, it's mostly the databases.

All-flash positions our organization for growth in a way, mostly for performance, because again, we're using all-flash for the performance that it provides, and we have critical databases running on it. It's providing day-to-day functionality, the way I see it.

What is most valuable?

  • The ease of use, from one perspective
  • The centralized storage
  • The ease of copying, backing up, and moving data from one server to the other

What needs improvement?

I would like to see more visibility regarding issues - active alerting. I know that InfoSight is currently trying to do what Nimble did for its storage. If it were proactively alerting regarding maintenance or something that's going to go bust, it could be very useful for us.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

All in all, it's a stable solution. From an availability perspective, we have it in both data centers. 

We found one huge bug when we implemented the solution, a critical bug that eventually crashed and shut down the storage, which is something that we cannot live with. But since then, a patch was provided for this issue, and over the last a year-and-a-half we haven't had any stability issues whatsoever.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is problematic. We would like to scale with our current infrastructure but we can't. We need to actually buy additional components, not just add disks. We actually need to buy additional controllers and, eventually, another storage unit. So it's not good enough.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is not good. Usually, when we have a problem, it takes ages until we get a response. We need to escalate several times, using HPE and the partner in Israel to make sure that we get the appropriate response. Usually, what we know or what we find out right away, is the same response that we get from support a week or two later - that something is happening. And only a month after that do we get a good solution that we can do something with.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

From a technical perspective, we understood the benefits of having centralized storage. From that point on we looked for what was supposed to be the right solution for us. Eventually, we zeroed in on the 3PAR solution and not the competition.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex. It's not a straightforward integration. There are a lot of parameters that you need to configure, and each parameter affects a lot of other things. Even though we used a partner for the implementation, after the installation in the data center we needed to rebuild everything and reconfigure everything several times. At the beginning, it wasn't good. Now we are stable so, except for the performance issue, everything is working as we expect it to work.

What about the implementation team?

We used an integrator. The guys are great, responsible. They did what they were supposed to do. They worked with HPE regarding the sizing of the storage solution, and it seems like someone there didn't do his job correctly. I don't know if it was HPE or the partner. But eventually, we had a problem.

What was our ROI?

It's a much more expensive solution than just buying local disks. On the other hand, it provides us a centralized point of management for all our storage. I can't tell you the exact ROI, but the simplicity and the centralization of the storage probably provide us with some kind of a return.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at NetApp. We also evaluated hyperconverged solutions like Nutanix, but it was not relevant at the time. And we were approached by HPE regarding SimpliVity but it was not relevant as well, at the time.

We went with 3PAR because, at the time, we were convinced that this would provide us the solution that we need, from several KPIs that we were looking at. We were promised performance that we didn't get in the end.

What other advice do I have?

Check the performance and every technical aspect that you can, as much as you can. Don't trust anyone else telling you otherwise. Test everything yourself.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using this solution is that having centralized storage is the right way to go and that sizing is everything. If you don't do the sizing right and you don't understand every detail of the product, how it works, you can be in a very unpleasant situation when you pay half a million dollars and you have a product that does not work as you expected.

What every IT guy will tell you is that we disable the dedupe, mostly because of the hit on the performance. Regarding InfoSight predictive analytics, we tried to use it. It was not that predictive because it doesn't give as much information as we were told. We had actually turned it on and we had a few critical issues but we got no alerts from InfoSight regarding them.

It increased performance for a while, but then, as we grew, and we did not grow significantly, performance dropped down. For a few of our critical, online systems, we went back to using the physical disks and not the centralized storage.

It was supposed to improve throughput but it was not enough, not as much as we were told before we bought the product.

We have talked about using the flex-capacity offering, HPE GreenLake, but we haven't used it yet.

From our experience, I would rate low, but I don't want to rate it low because from a technical perspective, it's a stable solution, it works. I would give the product a seven out of ten, even though our experience has not been that good. A seven is fair at this point.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Computerd47b - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Systems Administrator at a sports company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
The all-flash storage gives us the performance that we need
Pros and Cons
  • "The all-flash positions our organization for growth. If somebody comes to us who needs an application with performance, we have that already formulated."
  • "The remote copy group failover is very useful and has helped us."
  • "I would like to have single click upgrades because the process is cumbersome right now."

What is our primary use case?

We use three power arrays. The first array is for video storage and video surveillance. The second array is for production of our virtual machines. Pretty much everything is run on one of these three systems.

How has it helped my organization?

It provides us some disaster recovery capabilities. The all-flash storage gives us the performance that we need.

The remote copy group failover is very useful and has helped us.

We use InfoSight predictive analytics. The most useful part of it is being able to see the growth curve.

What is most valuable?

  • The uptime
  • Its reliability, that day in day out, it will continue to be running.

The solution's availability is very good.

What needs improvement?

I would like to have single click upgrades because the process is cumbersome right now. The upgrade process is very tedious. It takes a lot of time and effort, in addition to coordination with HPE. We are looking for something which is more user-friendly and easy to deploy. Fixing the upgrade process is very critical.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is very good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is alright. When we try to scale it, we do upgrades.

The all-flash positions our organization for growth. If somebody comes to us who needs an application with performance, we have that already formulated.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is good. We work with a local vendor.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Our previous solution was between five to six years old, so we were looking for something newer, like all-flash.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex, but we had the partner there to help.

What about the implementation team?

We used a partner for the deployment, and our experience with them was good.

What was our ROI?

The solution has increased our performance.

The solution helped our organization reduce our time to deployment.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I would recommend looking at Nimble instead. It is a similar option and something that we are looking at now, though 3PAR has been a pretty solid product.

What other advice do I have?

The solution’s deduplication functionality is alright.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
IT Manager at Judiciary of Neuquen
Real User
Easy to deploy and simple to configure the storage
Pros and Cons
  • "I found it easy to deploy and simple to configure the storage."
  • "The initial setup was easy. However, we get stuck on preconditions. We were not aware of some of the preconditions."

What is most valuable?

I found it easy to deploy and simple to configure the storage.

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have had no problems so far.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

One of the points that moved us towards 3PAR was we wanted to escalate it in a very high way.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not used tech support often, but when we have, they have been clear with us.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have already some IBM storage, but we are not happy with it. After checking out other models, we decided to work with 3PAR. Not only because we are familiar with HPE, but also the features combined well with our services.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy. However, we get stuck on preconditions. We were not aware of some of the preconditions. For example, the need for a different, separate IP network for replication. We had to rethink how we were going to implement it.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HPE 3PAR StoreServ Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HPE 3PAR StoreServ Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.